


The Mood It Changes Like The Wind

by NoStraightLine



Series: Trying to Find The In-Between [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mycroft Meddles, he's got a long way to go, john's reluctant, sex is not an adequate foundation for a relationship, sherlock begs for forgiveness, sherlock practices his people skills, still no porn, the belstaff makes an appearance and wishes it hadn't, yes i typed that right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 19:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoStraightLine/pseuds/NoStraightLine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Or an apology.</p><p>(Part Seven of Trying To Find The In-Between. It really won't make much sense without reading the earlier installments.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mood It Changes Like The Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Fan art by the amazing Justgot1 at the end. It's GORGEOUS. Exactly how I imagined a key moment in this installment. See it here on AO3: 
> 
> [AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/788149/chapters/1512657)
> 
> and here on Tumblr:
> 
> [Tumblr](http://justgot1.tumblr.com/post/50386648856/forgive-me-fan-art-for-nostraightlines-the-mood)

“Ta, Leslie.”

John tugs on his gloves, tightens his muffler, and gathers his single bag of shopping containing the ingredients for shrimp biryani. Leslie climbs back on her stepladder to finish taking down garish gold Christmas garland from over the checkout lane, and John pushes out into the winter air, headed for his flat. It’s a dry cold, for once. His shoulder aches less on days like this, when there isn’t a hint of rain, but either way, he doesn’t mind the walk. He focuses on the pavement under his feet, the air’s dry texture in his nostrils and lungs, the pleasant weight of the bag in his hand.

Little things, but they’re his, here and now. He does not wish for more.

When John’s two blocks from home Mycroft’s car pulls to the kerb half a block ahead of him. John steadfastly ignores the car door opening, Mycroft emerging, placing himself directly in John’s path.

“Hello, John,” he calls in a slightly raised voice.

“Dr. Watson,” John says.

It’s the third time in the four months since Sherlock’s resurrection Mycroft has waylaid him between work, the shops, and his flat, but this is the first time John’s responded in any way to his voice or presence. The man who is the British government swallows his not inconsiderable pride. John watches the lump make its way down his esophagus, into his gut, like a snake that swallowed a goat. He hopes he chokes on it.

“Dr. Watson.” A pause John ignores. “I am here to ask you to see my brother again.”

John keeps walking without veering right or left, directly for Mycroft. “Did he send you?”

“No.” Mycroft grimaces, steps neatly to the side, and gives the umbrella a little spin as he falls in beside John. “I am an ambassador without portfolio.”

Whatever the fuck that means. John finds he’s still sick to death of the Holmes brothers, their accessories, their expensive clothes, their propensity to use ordinary people to further their own ends, their willingness to lie about every-fucking-thing. Of course Sherlock sent him.  

“I’m better, Mycroft,” he says to the man matching his pace as if they were mates. “Just the nightmares about Afghanistan now. No cane, either. I’m working. Not my ideal job, but it’s a job. Thanks for asking.”

Mycroft has the decency to flush. “I’m glad to hear it, Dr. Watson.”

The victory is small, and petty. “He’s dead, Mycroft. Remember? He’s dead. You’re asking me to see a dead man.”

“He’s grieving your loss.”

“Sherlock Holmes cannot possibly feel enough to mourn,” John dismisses. The biryani will be a good one. Leslie’s brother-in-law has a connection that supplies fresh seafood. He can smell the shrimp, taste the fresh ginger. It’s sheer delight, the ability to anticipate something as simple as the flavors of food he’s cooked himself. “There’s no benefit to mourning. No advantage. Nothing to win.”

“You’re wrong, Dr. Watson.”

John refuses to be drawn into a schoolyard argument that will go something like _No I’m not Yes you are No I’m not Yes you are_. He just keeps walking, his brain focused on the slippery feel of peeling the shrimp, removing the vein from the curvature of the back, the crackle as they sauté in butter.

“See for yourself,” Mycroft calls.

The hint of desperation in his voice makes John turn, braced against an(other) ambush, but it’s just Mycroft, propped on his umbrella by a black car.

He turns his back on Mycroft and walks home.

  
He makes the biryani, the meal as delightful as the process, and stows the rest in the fridge for lunch on Saturday. He watches a documentary on otters, then goes to bed. It’s not much of a life, a frankly pathetic one for a man in his forties, a doctor and a soldier, but John no longer takes simple pleasures for granted. He’s able to enjoy this. For now, it’s enough.

He falls asleep, dreams he’s clawing at the spokes of a black umbrella that’s blocking his view of something he has to see. Must see. His arm is clothed in camouflage, and his heart beats as erratically as the gunfire to his right. When he gets the umbrella down, brilliant sunshine nearly blinds him. He blinks until his eyes adjust to a dusty road outside the FOB. In the aftermath of two IEDs a squad of soldiers shouts, hunkers down in case they come under fire, dragging their injured mates to safety. John recognizes the scene, one of the last he’d seen before getting shot himself. Sweat and dust coat his boots, his face.

Sherlock is there, barefoot, bareheaded, unarmed. It’s the aftermath of a war zone explosion that killed four and injured a dozen, but all he wears is the aubergine shirt and dark trousers.

 _Get away_ , John shouts. _Don’t look!_

Sherlock ignores him, then reaches into the wreckage of the Humvee. John remembers what comes out of that particular section of vehicle, a torso with a blank-eyed, helmeted head and arms, and nothing below the pelvis but trailing intestines and seared meat.

_Sherlock! No!_

Instead of the ravaged torso, Sherlock holds up his head by the hair. Blood seeps not from the neck, strangely jagged as if cut away from his body with the edging John recognizes from his mother’s pinking shears, but from the macabre mask’s mouth, nose, and ears.  
Sherlock scoops a finger into the mask’s mouth, draws it back clotted with blood, and tastes it. John is swimming in wet cement, fighting his way through the soldiers, past the wounded, screaming Sherlock’s name, but he can’t get there. He knows he can’t.  

Blood, oil, and petrol spilled through the jagged hole in the vehicle’s floor, and it’s spattered with bone and intestines. Sherlock drops to his knees by the Humvee, hunches over, and laps at the crimson soaking into the dirt in the same businesslike fashion as the skinny, fur-matted dogs gathering in the aftermath of the fight. The dogs of war. Grieving soldiers lift the butts of their rifles to drive them off, but they close in on Sherlock.

_SHERLOCK! Sher — !_

Sherlock looks up at John, his nose and mouth coated with gore as the rifle butts descend.

John screams himself awake. He barely makes it to the toilet before he vomits up the biryani.    
  
+  
  
The next day in the break room he catches a whiff of someone’s reheated lunch. It’s curry, not biryani, but the scents are close enough that John flashes back to the dream. He fights down a wave of nausea before shoving his sack lunch back into the fridge and returning to his office.

Dreams are meaningless, products of the brain’s efforts to sort the events of the day, the experiences of a lifetime. It’s not unusual that he’d dream of Sherlock and Afghanistan.

Except it is. He’s dreamed of Sherlock. He’s dreamed of Afghanistan. Never like this.

At home, he bins the leftover biryani and makes a sausage frittata for dinner.

Three days later he hasn’t stopped thinking about it, the umbrella, the blood, Sherlock’s face. He calls Mycroft from the clinic and leaves a message with the assistant. “He can have ten minutes tonight. That’s it.”  
  
+  
  
Sherlock’s sitting at the small table in the kitchen, staring out the window as the sun sets behind a low bank of clouds. The weather matches his mood, dull, unrelentingly cold, which makes it easy to ignore the persistent buzz of the doorbell. When his mobile vibrates he glances at it. The texts are always from Mycroft, but hope, he’s found, never truly disappears, no matter how how futile the circumstances.

Answer your door, Sherlock. I’ve sent a car for you. John has agreed to see you. MH

This is an impossibility, but Sherlock will play along with Mycroft’s little joke.

Why did he make this offer? SH

I asked him. MH

Sherlock closes his eyes. It’s not a joke.

He asked me to leave him alone. SH

It’s really the only thing he ever asked of me. SH

I am not you. MH

True on so many levels.

No. SH

Please. MH

Mycroft never says _please_ and means it. Never. Like Sherlock, he doesn’t need to. It’s a meaningless word used as a placeholder in the standard conversational rhythm between individuals, not a true plea. Sherlock cannot imagine what Mycroft’s actually done to prompt such supplication, but whatever it is gives Sherlock leverage.

You must promise to leave him alone. SH

I give you my word. MH

Sherlock pulls on his coat against the biting January cold. A car and impassive driver wait outside his building. He gets into the back seat and closes the door.

John didn’t ask for this. He doesn’t want to see Sherlock.

Sherlock thinks about what he wants to say, what’s important. He will apologize. He will ask for forgiveness.  

He does not allow himself to hope to get it.    
  
+  
  
It’s exactly six o’clock when the doorbell for the building entrance rings. John simply buzzes Sherlock in, cracks open his door, then stands by the desk. He’s thought very carefully about what he intends to accomplish in the next ten minutes. He’s going to reassure his subconscious that after nearly five months of Lazarus-like resurrection, Sherlock is hale and hearty, not in need of rescuing or saving or John. Ten minutes is plenty for that. Ten seconds should do the trick.

The steps coming slowly up the stairs scuff rather than bound, so that can’t be Sherlock. John looks at his watch. When he looks up, Sherlock stands in the open door. He takes two oddly hesitant steps into the flat, then stops.

John folds his arms.

Sherlock folds to his knees.

The cheap carpet muffles the impact, or maybe Sherlock just doesn’t weigh much anymore. It’s oddly graceless for the man who once danced his way into a bit of rough. He stays there for a long moment, hands loose at his sides, swaying slightly, looking at John. His eyes red-rimmed, and anguished. Then he bows his head. One hand lifts to hover over his cranium, trembling, until the long fingers weave into the hair and clench tight.

Memory echoes through space and time. _Do you want me to beg? I will._

“John, I beg of you…” His words trail off into a faint, “Wrong.”

John’s not sure if Sherlock can’t find words, or if he’s delirious from exhaustion, and/or hunger, and/or dehydration. The door to the hall is still open. Possibly Sherlock doesn’t care if anyone sees him so humiliated, on his knees. Possibly it’s an oddly elaborate courtesy, making it easy for John to throw him out.

Hand still fisted in his hair, Sherlock clears his throat. The dry rasp makes John flinch. “John, I am sorry. Forgive me. Please. I beg of you…forgive me.”

Sherlock’s velvet voice is broken. His cheekbones cut like knives, and his hair is too long, even for Sherlock’s standards. The folds of the coat weigh down his frame as if his shoulders have all the heft and resistance of a plastic hanger. The trousers so tightly tailored to his body three years ago now ride too low on his hips, show no hint of thigh. John controls a body-length flinch when Sherlock lifts his gaze back to John’s.

What in God’s name has Sherlock done to himself?

John walks past the man kneeling in his living room and closes the door.

  
Hands now on his hips, John studies the skin and bones on his knees in front of him, and lets the doctor takes over.

“When did you last eat?”

Sherlock shakes his head.

“Drink?”

Another shake.

“Are you working? Lestrade? Your brother?”

A third shake.

“Answer me.”

“No. I’m not working. I’m not cleared yet.”

John thinks of the many, many things Sherlock does when he’s bored, none of them healthy outlets for stress. “What are you doing besides not eating, not drinking, and not working? Drugs?” Drugs might explain his condition.

“No.” The word has a sharp edge to it. Sherlock’s still in there somewhere.

“Playing the violin?”

The hand slips from nape to lap. Sherlock stares at it as if fingers and palm comprise a foreign object grafted onto the end of his arm. “I’ve lost interest.”

John scoffs.

“I left it behind.”

John waits for the melodrama. _I left behind everything I love._ It doesn’t come, so Sherlock lives to see another minute, but John’s done with the solicitous inquiries.

“What the _fucking fuck_ have you done to yourself?”

“Followed you,” Sherlock says. His voice rasps over the words. “You would have followed me into hell. It was my turn to follow you.”

John thinks about the howling void where he spent the last two years. It is hell. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even on Sherlock.

_You’re an idiot._

The response is as automatic as assessing Sherlock’s condition, but he doesn’t say the words. “I’ve got leftover frittata,” he says instead.

He leaves the folded creature on his floor to follow him. In the kitchen he busies himself removing the storage container from a meticulously clean fridge, heating it in the equally pristine microwave. After he pushes Start he runs a glass of water and sets it on the kitchen table Sherlock’s shambling towards.

“Drink that.”

He expects an argument. Instead Sherlock eases into a chair, then swallows all of the water in three gulps. While the microwave hums, John reaches out and lays the back of his hand against Sherlock’s forehead, then takes his pulse at his unresisting wrist.

“I’m not ill.”

“Did you get a medical degree while you were dead?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.”

Astonishingly, Sherlock shuts up. John continues his assessment. It’s winter in London so everyone’s pasty, but Sherlock’s beyond that, into an unhealthy pallor. No fever, a solid fifty beats a minute, breathing also slow but both within normal bounds. John knows perfectly well that healthy individuals don’t die from heartbreak, but they do die of hunger and dehydration. He refills the glass, sets the plate on the table in front of Sherlock. He doesn’t sit.

Sherlock mechanically makes an effort to eat what’s on his plate. He sips more water every three bites. John stops him at half of the frittata. “That’s more than I’ve ever seen you eat at one sitting.”

Sherlock looks at the plate, the table, the counter, then focuses his gaze ever so slightly to the left of John’s eyes. John gestures to the plate. _Be my guest._

Sherlock eats a few more bites, then sets his fork neatly on the plate. “Thank you.”

John removes the plate and glass. He scrapes the remainders into the bin, rinses the dishes. When he turns around, Sherlock’s standing by the chair. It’s unusual, downright disconcerting, watching imperious Sherlock duck his gaze. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“You’re welcome,” John says. “You need to leave.”

A miniscule flinch. “May I see you again?”

His voice is quiet, so quiet, as if he expects a refusal but is compelled to ask. Perhaps he is. John didn’t respond to his plea, and he knows he didn’t.

The truth is, he doesn’t know how he feels about seeing Sherlock again. He just doesn’t know. Sherlock isn’t dead. He’s done something to himself, and the Sherlock who came back and pronounced death a _brilliant adventure_ would not have bothered to transform himself into this wreck for John. The man before him is incapable of lying. Or manipulating. For the moment. Sherlock was dead for over two years and came back no different. Four months of being alive and he’s wrecked. So what has he done, and why has he done it?

_Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me._

He takes his internal temperature. There will be rules. John will make them. Sherlock must come to him. He won’t see Sherlock anywhere but a place that has no associated memories of them. There will be no crime scenes, no more spur-of-the-moment trips to the morgue or the chemist’s, no late nights crouched behind skips or in abandoned buildings, no more John following Sherlock anywhere. He will see Sherlock like he’d see any other casual acquaintance: infrequently, on neutral territory.

“Yes. Text me.”

“May I have your mobile number?”

_Lies? Already?_

Fury reassembles itself, a black swirl of jagged, razor edges he swings at Sherlock like a cosh. “Fucking hell, Sherlock! You got it from Mycroft as soon as you realized I got a new mobile!”

Sherlock’s eyes widen as he grips the back of the kitchen chair. “I did not. I — .”

“You sent Mycroft to harass me!”

“I did not know Mycroft took it upon himself to visit you until he told me you’d agreed to see me. Said visits will stop immediately.”

John’s mouth shuts with an audible click.

For the first time in their entire relationship, Sherlock Holmes respected a boundary.

John holds out his hand. Sherlock reaches into his coat pocket and withdraws a mobile, then, as if he knows better than to initiate contact given John’s current frame of mind, sets it on the table between them. John plucks it from the laminate surface and scrolls through Sherlock’s contacts. There is indeed no John Watson, although Sherlock could have deleted the contact before plodding up the stairs, or entered his number under another name.

John refuses to hold hands with paranoia, just enters his name, his new mobile number. “Text me,” he repeats, keeping his voice steady as he sets the phone on the table.

Sherlock doesn’t push his luck. He doesn’t ask if he’s forgiven. He doesn’t ask when he can come. He picks up the phone, says _thank you_ one last time. Then he leaves.  
  
+  
  
Sherlock eases into the fine leather of Mycroft’s back seat and folds his arms across his abdomen. Months of little food, too much sleep, and emotional turmoil have left him foggy, slow, dull. _Think_ , he berated himself. _Observe. What did you observe?_

John is still livid. The swiftness of his fury, his conviction that Sherlock was lying to him, hit Sherlock with the force of a roundhouse kick. All he did was ask for John’s phone number, and John reacted as if God himself tapped him to execute Armageddon. John wouldn’t trust Sherlock to tell him the color of the sky, and this time they’re texting because John prefers it.

The simple meal wasn’t forgiveness. John would provide food, shelter, and medical care to a terrorist, then, if ordered, he’d strap that individual to a gurney destined for the death chamber. Remember that about John Watson.

Nevertheless, he texts Mycroft.

Thank you. SH

You’re welcome. Is all well? MH

No. SH

Ah. MH

He’s going to let me see him again. SH

Sherlock’s nearly back to his flat when his phone buzzes again.

It’s a start. MH  
  
+  
  
The next morning Sherlock gets up, showers, dresses in clean clothes, and sets about straightening his flat. The setting is ripe for John the Savior to rush in and restore Sherlock to health and well-being. He prepares to defend against that, because John should not have to save him. His life may be in ruins, but he will rebuild it himself. He will have something more than brilliance and beauty to offer John.

What does John need?

A friend. The signs that John’s largely alone are obvious. His flat lacked even rudimentary decorative touches, his fridge containing milk for tea, the frittata, prepackaged salad and little else. The cupboard held four plates, four bowls, four glasses. It’s unlikely he’s entertaining  friends, old or new, in that sterile place.

It exhausts him, gathering newspapers and recycling them, changing his bed, removing months of dust from flat surfaces. Emotions cannot be switched off and on like machines, and little happened at John’s flat to give him reason to hope. But they cannot go back to the way they were before, and Sherlock will have a tidy flat to offer when John contacts him.

But that is not what happens.

John doesn’t contact him at all.  
  
+  
  
Dinner? SH  
  
  
John walks into the restaurant promptly at seven, slipping his phone in his pocket as he crosses the dining room. He’s wearing a tie, jacket, and slacks, so he’s come from work. His face is reddened from the cold wind, so he arrived early but stood outside in the winter air surfing the internet until it was time rather than talking to Sherlock. John joins Sherlock at the quiet table in the back corner, opens the menu, skims the offerings, then closes it again.

“I’m going to say this once. Don’t lie. Because if I find out you’ve lied to me again, about anything up to and including the sodding temperature in degrees C, we’re through.”

“Yes. Of course,” Sherlock agrees.

The waiter runs through the specials, then takes their order. John declines wine, and the server disappears.

John’s gaze searches Sherlock’s. “Where the hell have you been?”

Relief swamps him. Swept up in the sheer rightness of the situation, in the utter delight of John watching him and _it’s fine, fine, it’s all fine_ , he talks faster and faster, detailing the early stages of his journey into the global criminal underworld, until —

“Then, when I saw you at the cemetery, I knew why the terror cells were — “

His voice cuts off abruptly, because John’s face has gone from stony to seething. He’s made a mistake. John did not know Sherlock was watching him.

_You **idiot.**_

Before Sherlock can recover, John gets to his feet, drops his napkin on his chair, and walks out of the restaurant.

That’s it, then.

But…John stops just outside the door. Sherlock watches through the large front windows as John puts his hands on his hips, and breathes in the same slow exhales and deep inhales he uses to get himself back under control after a nightmare. The process continues for over a minute while passersby slow to stare and John steadfastly ignores them. Then he sets his shoulders, walks back into the restaurant, plucks his napkin from his chair, and sits down.

“I’m sorry. That was thoughtless,” Sherlock says before John can speak.

John’s glare is a punch, but one pulled at the last possible moment. “Yes, it bloody well was.”

“You told me not to lie to you.”

Elbows on the white linen tablecloth, John’s head drops into his hands. The tips of his fingers whiten as he grips his skull through short strands that are now as much silver as blonde. “Yes, I bloody well did,” he says to the plate.

“Nevertheless, I caused you pain. I’m sorry.”

Hands still clutching his head, John peers up at him, his eyes searching Sherlock’s face for God only knows what. Authenticity, perhaps, and Sherlock learns a new fear: that what he feels is unclear to others. Because he understands John’s pain, at least a portion of it, and he is sorry, and words suddenly seem utterly inadequate.

“Did you watch me any other time?”

Lying is absolutely the right thing to do here, and at the same time absolutely the wrong thing to do. “The five times I was back in London.”

“You bloody bas— .”

Sherlock knows what was about to happen, and he’s earned it. “You can call me names, John.”

“I can’t, actually,” John says, his eyes as bleak as a frozen lake. “Want to know why?”

No. This is too hard. Dealing with his own emotions overwhelms him. Handling John’s in addition to his own is beyond him, and yet… “Yes.”

“I spent years thinking you’d gone to your grave with me calling you a dick one of the last things you heard me say.”

Sherlock physically recoils from the implication. This is not fine. They might not ever be fine again.

“Mycroft also sent me pictures of you on CCTV,” Sherlock admitted. Might as well come clean with the worst of what he’d done. “That time when the Syrian hitmen had you at gunpoint. How did you convince them to let you leave?”

John looks at him like he’s a particularly vile piece of refuse dredged from the bottom of the Thames. “I asked them if I looked like you were alive.”

“Oh.”

“Your plan worked. They were terrified. They knew someone was on to them. I thought it was because of Mycroft, but it was actually you.”

Sherlock bites off the flow of words detailing all the intricacies of the pursuit that led up to that particular interaction. Now is not the time. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? _Why?_ You’d left. Why watch me?”

“When I did I felt like _you_ were still watching _me_. I needed that. I needed to know…”

His voice cuts off abruptly, because the end of that sentence is obvious. _I needed to know you were alive._ This should have been a good thing. He needed to know John was alive because he loved John, but he didn’t know he loved John, and he left, _he left him here_ , alone in his grief. But John’s face is ravaged, and only after following John into the grief can Sherlock understand even a fraction of what he’s done.

“So you took it from me. Even when you were gone, you took from me.”

His voice is so quiet it’s terrifying. Sherlock waits for it all to be over again.

Hands still clutching his head, John breathes deep, and reaches inside for something Sherlock can’t identify. Patience, perhaps. Fortitude. Or the words to gut Sherlock.

“Sherlock. How do you think this makes me feel?”

The question is delivered in the tone usually reserved for mums asking small children what the cow says. Four months ago Sherlock would have bristled, and refused to answer that question. Four months ago he would have told John to stop being so dull, so pedestrian. Now he knows he has to get this right, or once again, they are over. He chooses his words very, very carefully. “I used you. I egregiously manipulated you and your love to further my own ends. I took you for granted. So, I imagine hearing what I did while you were grieving me is like acid in the wound of my deception. I imagine it is intolerable.”

“Yep. That’s about right.”

John doesn’t leave but their food is arriving so perhaps that’s why. Perhaps he just wanted to make Sherlock admit to his grievous sin. They eat perfunctorily, without conversation, and neither of them takes more than a few bites. John declines coffee and dessert, thanks Sherlock because that’s who John Watson is, then pleads an early morning at the surgery. After he leaves Sherlock tips his phone from corner to corner while the server processes his credit card.

That was a disaster.  
  
+  
  
Once again there are no texts from John. Sherlock lets a few days pass, rethinks his strategy. Clearly they are not going to pick up where they left off; they are not going to pick up on the same continent where they left off. He remembers Molly tentatively asking him to coffee the day he met John. He could do with the practice.  

He waits for Molly outside Barts, across the street from bit of pavement where the body landed after he fell. He’s not seen her since the head of security for Barts called to personally explain the consequences should Sherlock ignore the property ban, using words like _perp walk, handcuffs, charges pressed to the fullest extent of the law_. “Hello, Molly.”

“Sherlock!” She gives him a quick, awkward hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I wondered if you’d like to get a coffee?”

Her smile falters. “Oh. On a case, are you? I was on my way home, but I can… Black with two sugars?”

“I’m not on a case. I meant with me. At a shop.”

She does. She’s carrying six different totes, and at any given time one is slipping from a shoulder or elbow. In the coffee shop she’s nervous and flustered and fidgety, but she talks. And talks. Her mum, her cats, the man she’s dating. It’s inane, and crashingly dull, but it matters to Molly, and that seems to be the point.  

“This was nice,” Molly says, giving him a quick smile. “Thanks.”

The list of people he’s offended, angered, humiliated, or enraged is long, but Molly’s name is at the top. Begin as you mean to go on. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“What?” she asked, looking around for whatever catastrophe he’s caused. “For what?”

“Christmas. When you brought me a present and I deduced how you felt about me in front of everyone. I humiliated you and it was unkind. I was showing off. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

Because that’s what people say, and this time he means it.

Her eyes widen. “Oh. That,” she says. “It’s all right. It really is.”

It isn’t. She’s lying to make him feel better, and he’s grateful. “I’m also sorry I asked you to get me a body and deceive everyone for years.”

Her eyes cloud over and her smile falters. “I didn’t know it would be so hard. But I did it, and I’m glad,” she says stoutly. “You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t.”

He nods. Asking for forgiveness may lift a weight, but it brings back memories he’d rather not experience yet again. Except there’s no other way to repair the damage.

“Why did you invite me out?” she asks. “I know it’s not for me.”

“I had dinner with John. It was a disaster. I was a disaster.”

Awareness dawns, and she looks around the coffee shop with new eyes. “You want me to help you practice being normal.”

“An unachievable end state,” Sherlock says. Grief didn’t fundamentally alter his brain and intellect, or surgically transplant an entirely new personality in place of his old one. He can’t expect John to teach him, so he will learn, for John. “Help me be a better version of me.”

Molly plays with one of the bows on her sweater. Rather belatedly it occurs to Sherlock that asking infatuated Molly to help him get John back might fall in the _bit not good_ category, but she just smiles a rather sad smile, and nods. “Let’s do this again.”

Excellent. “Tomorrow at four,” Sherlock says.

“Wrong,” Molly carols. “You don’t state it like fact. You ask.”

He grinds his teeth. “Molly, would you like to get a coffee tomorrow at four?”

“I can’t. I’m working,” she says with a delighted clap of her hands.

Getting a bit of her own back, was she? “You’re enjoying this.”

“I am,” she says, smiling. “I really, really am. I can’t do tomorrow, but I could do Friday lunch.”

He nods. On Friday he asks about her cats, about family members, about work. As expected, no change in status since Tuesday, so he proceeds with more interesting conversation. She interrupts a ten minute monologue on the recent developments in genetically modified food to gently remind him that a couple of minutes was the limit without allowing the other person to interject, or ask a question, or change the subject. She then grades his overall performance far more gently than he’s ever treated her.

“Oh, and no deducing,” she finishes.

“It’s efficient. For example, if I know you always have a soy latte with two shots of vanilla and a shortbread biscuit, I can remember that and order ahead.” It’s thoughtful. Right?

“Ask, Sherlock,” she says gently. “People like to be asked.”

So he should not have ordered an entire meal for Sarah Sawyer, and perhaps he should have asked John basic questions like _How are you?_. He nods.

She considers him. “You should give this a go with Lestrade, too. Men have different conversations than women.”  
  
+  
  
He doesn’t need Lestrade. Two coffee dates should be sufficient to master the basics. The principles aren’t complicated, and John once again hasn’t texted.  
  
How hard can it be?  
  
Coffee? SH  
  
+  
  
John holds open the coffee shop door for a woman leaving with her son. He immediately sees Sherlock sitting at a table in the corner. He has a cup in front of him, and gives John a relaxed nod.

John bristles but keeps a lid on his temper as he orders a latte and a sandwich. He worked through lunch catching up on patient notes, and he’s hungry. Dealing with Sherlock on an empty stomach was a bad idea before the fall, but he refused to send his nurse out for a sandwich just to make sure he was at his best for the man who…for Sherlock.

Out of the corner of his eye he watches Sherlock watch him while the espresso machine steams and the barista hands him his toasted cheese sandwich. Sherlock looks better. Still achingly thin, but washed, hair trimmed, and less…drowned. John’s not sure why he said yes to coffee. Dinner was a fiasco, and he has no reason to suspect this stretch of time in which beverages are consumed in each other’s presence will go any better.

But he has things he wants to know. At night, when he remembers Sherlock on his knees, grey-white and nearly crushed by the weight of water, he wants to know why.

“We could have had lunch,” Sherlock says when he joins him.

John realises he’s angled himself away from Sherlock, shifts to avoid giving anything else away, remembers who he’s sitting with, and settles back into his original position. “This is fine,” he says, and bites into the cheese sandwich. “Why did you do it? Why did you go into the grief?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow, as they do when data lies outside his predicted pattern, then considers this before answering. “You were my friend. My only friend. I’d lost you. I grieved.”

“You decided to do it. Like an experiment.”

There’s an even longer pause before Sherlock answers. John can tell he’s thinking through his answer. “Initially, yes.”

John has a hard time swallowing his mouthful of crispy baguette and melted cheese.

“You said don’t lie,” Sherlock hurries. “So yes, it was an experiment. Then it wasn’t. Then it was real.”

He can just imagine it, Sherlock deciding to throw open all the doors locking away unnecessary things like affection, emotions, love, then drowning under the weight of it all. “And?”

The pauses between Sherlock’s answers grow longer with each question. “I was no longer able to bury what I felt,” he says finally.

 _Did you mean it?_ hovers in the air between them, but John’s not ready to go there. “Why? It’s grief. It’s devastating. It’s not like…shaving your head to show solidarity for a friend with cancer.”

To John’s amusement, Sherlock looks vaguely appalled by the thought before he transfers his gaze to the passersby on the street. “I did not understand what I had done. I found I couldn’t bear to not understand. Then I found I couldn’t bear what I’d done. But you had.” He looked at John. “You used to say it was your job to take risks with me. To survive with me. I wanted to survive with you.”

John once again finds the cheese sandwich resisting relocation to his stomach; this time the lump in his throat impedes the progress. “But you didn’t. You didn’t survive _with_ me.”

“I know.”

“It was always real for me. It was never-ending grief. I can’t delete it. It’s carved into me somehow. And the betrayal. You used me. You used me unconscionably to further your own ends. Friends don’t do that to each other.” His throat works. “Lovers don’t do that to each other.”

Of course Sherlock used him. It’s what he did. He was Sherlock. He used people to get what he wanted. John knew this. John regularly told him off for doing it, to no avail.

“I know,” Sherlock admits. “Even knowing you were alive, the last four months were…intolerable. I am sorry.”

“Can you walk away from those months as easily as you walked into them?”

“It wasn’t easy, John.”

It’s John’s turn to blink, then he looks at Sherlock, really looks at him. Sherlock’s face is worn. There’s something different around the eyes, the mouth, something John hasn’t seen before. He’s seen brilliance, but this isn’t brilliance. It might be wisdom, paid for, as it always is, with pain.

“Nor would I wish them away.”

John finds he can’t respond to that. Steam rises from the cup nestled in his curled fingers. He sips his coffee, looks out the window. A woman peers at them over her green-rimmed glasses, then points her mobile in their direction. Expressionless, John reaches for the cord controlling the coffee shop’s shades and lowers it.

“We are still news,” Sherlock muses.

“I’m not,” John says.

“I’m not either,” Sherlock says.

“But we are.” He’s not happy about it, either. Once, just once, he’d like a little privacy to deal with all things Sherlock.

“I told them you and I had ended our partnership when I disappeared,” Sherlock offers.

“It’s the tabloids. They had to have a go.”

“You stopped blogging.”

“I couldn’t do it anymore,” John said matter-of-factly. “I hated the thought that people knew anything about me. I thought I couldn’t feel any more alone than I did after I saw you fall. Then total strangers came up to me on the street and commiserated. We were all fooled, they said. I told them they were wrong, that I wasn’t fooled, that Moriarty tricked them, not me. I knew who I was, who you were, what we had. I defended you. Us.”

“I’m sorry.”

Anger flares hot and fierce, burning away John’s appetite. He flattens the sandwich in its paper wrapper, then leans forward and thumps his finger on the table for emphasis. “I told you I loved you. You were _inside me_ — “

_lips to lips Sherlock’s thumb at his temple the thud of Sherlock’s pulse in that throat pleasure from one end of the night to the other his heart racing throat tight IloveyouIloveyouGodIloveyou_

“ — and I said _I love you_.”

“I’m sorry.” Light plays upon his eyes like light on the surface of a pool. Silver _sorrow_ blue _regret_ gray _shame_ green _fear_.

“It’s not enough to apologize.” John tries to lower his voice, but people are starting to stare. There’s so much emotion inside him, and Sherlock…God, Sherlock is Sherlock. His heart thuds hard every time he makes eye contact with him, and then his stomach lurches, and he _remembers_. “Apologies can’t fix this. They can’t. You have to stop hurting then apologizing. You run a tab no one can pay, and it’s not just with other people. It’s with yourself, too, and when it comes due — ”

He stops. It’s not his job to fix Sherlock, or smooth his way anymore.

“I am aware of that,” Sherlock says. Unlike John, his voice is very quiet, almost indistinguishable from the low hum of voices, machinery, lorries on the street. “Very, very aware, John. I’m trying.”

John can’t take any more. “I have to go.”

He jerks into his coat as he shoulders through the door, leaving Sherlock behind once more.  
  
+  
  
Apparently having coffee with your former lover is quite complicated when one factors in a faked suicide and two years of grief.

+  
  
Pub? SH  
  
Lestrade subjects Sherlock to an excruciating twenty-five minute discussion about football, leagues and players’ injuries and the current standings, subjects so utterly irrelevant to the roiling sea of emotion inside Sherlock that his jaw and shoulders ache when they part ways. Molly explains that men are generally bad listeners and also emotionally brain-dead, which gives Sherlock a new appreciation for John, who listened for hours on end while Sherlock talked about anything and everything. Determined to practice, he tries again with Lestrade, this time at dinner. He’s well enough to read the papers again, entertaining himself by hacking into the Yard’s database, pestering Mycroft for classified information, which he provides only after Sherlock’s successful attempts to penetrate both the MI5 and MI6 databases bring armed men to his flat. There’s something big beginning to coalesce, a string of murdered young Eastern European women, emaciated and abused, with signs of repeated abortions and rapes. They are young, and no one reports them missing. Classic human trafficking.

“I can take a look at the bodies, if you like,” Sherlock says to Lestrade. He worked on a similar syndicate while snipping the strands of Moriarty’s web.

“Can’t do it,” Lestrade says.

“I…spent time in Iran, Uzbekistan, Russia, and the Ukraine.”

Lestrade’s gaze sharpens. “Did you now? Quite the holiday you took while you were dead.”

Sherlock nods.

“I can’t do it.”

“Then take me to the docks where you found the bodies.” Shipping containers and boats are the most common method of bringing people into the country unseen. They might have died on the trip over and floated to shore on the tide, or been dumped there. He needs data if he’s to work this case.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Sherlock bites down hard on what Molly would call badgering, pestering, and annoying. “How’s your wife?”

Lestrade gives him an amused smile. “I’ve known you for almost a decade. You never ask about the trouble and strife. You didn’t know my first name until that case in Dartmoor.”

He grits his teeth at this bollocksing of his research. “Just answer the question.”

“She’s fine. Why?”

“I’m attempting to learn the algorithms of conversational discourse.”

Lestrade just goggles at him. Exposed, humiliated, and stymied from The Work, Sherlock snaps, “Come on, man! Think!”

The light dawns almost as slowly as the sun rises. “How is John?”

“He’s also fine,” Sherlock says. The eruption of emotion recedes, leaving him hollowed out. John is fine. John has a job and an apartment and a life without Sherlock. It’s Sherlock who is less than fine.

“Seen him lately?”

“We’ve had dinner, and coffee.”

“And?”

“The end results were unsatisfactory.”

Lestrade’s expression is hard to read. Sherlock knows that Lestrade’s loyalties are divided. He’s worked with Sherlock for over a decade, but Lestrade likes John, and had to watch him disintegrate during Sherlock’s absence. Based on the suddenly expressionless look on his face, he’s thinking carefully about his allegiances. “What do you want? You want him to work with you again? You want him to move back in?”

“I want to be his friend.”

“Why?”

The answer to that question would take hours to explicate, so Sherlock settles for the concise version. “Because he was mine, and I failed him.”

Lestrade’s lined face relaxes, so somehow he’s managed to say the right thing, to indicate how he wants to give something to John, not take something from him. “How’s that going?”

“As well as you might presume given that we were lovers and I let him think I was dead for over two years. I lied to him. I watched him mourn me, and did not stop to count the price he paid.”

“Par for the course with you,” Lestrade says, magnificently unconcerned. “John knows who you are. Give it time.” He finishes his pint and signals for the check. “Want to take a look at some cold cases?”

Interesting. Confirmation that behaving kindly towards others helps smooth one’s own way, and not just with John. Sherlock considers the offer. In the past he’s refused. They’re cold for a reason, chilled by time, faltering memories, obliterating of evidence, and usually drenched in human emotion. They’re not solved by brilliant flashes of insight. They’re solved through patient legwork, dogged determination, and more luck than he likes. “You’re letting me work on these because no one can accuse me of committing the crimes,” he says.

Lestrade doesn’t deny it. “Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

They swing by the Yard. Lestrade leads him into a dimly lit basement storage room and hands him a stack of files so old they haven’t been computerized. The reports for two are printed on the green-and-white striped paper from the dot matrix era. They smell of dust and bitter coffee and despair and failure.

It’s something to do, something that might redeem him.   

“The docks?” he asks as Lestrade escorts him out.

“You’ll go without me, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Sherlock muses.

“Tomorrow morning. Early.”

Lestrade turns toward the parking garage, but Sherlock stops him. "Lestrade." Shame creeps up his spine to swell at the base of his neck, sending an unfamiliar heat into his face, but he has begun and he means to go on. "Is everything...with your wife...financially, is your family...that is to say, has she been able to quit her job?"

Lestrade stares at him for several second, his dark eyes so astonished Sherlock writhes inside. "Yeah. We're good."

"I'm sorry," Sherlock says quietly. "Can I help in any way? I can help. I will. I am responsible for -- "

"We're fine," Lestrade says more firmly. Then he smiles. "Let it go, mate. I have."

+

Initially, forgiveness feels as intense as shame, prickly and hot and teary. Except, when it recedes, it leaves him a little more whole than he was before.  
  
+  
  
Coffee? SH

John’s reply comes sixty-one hours later.

Saturday afternoon.

Where? SH  
  
John’s suggested location is inconvenient, and his time will prevent Sherlock from beginning a tricky all day experiment. He agrees anyway.  
  
It goes better. John is still stiff and jerky in his movements. His gaze skims Sherlock’s face, flicks at it, never lingers. Sherlock asks a few questions, gets terse answers, but John’s manners are good. He asks if Sherlock’s working. Sherlock mentions the cold cases without going into detail, opting instead for a funny story. He knows John will find it funny because a) Sherlock’s the one who ended up flat on his back in a slick of fish guts discarded by casual fishermen who didn’t want a mess in their houses and b) Lestrade and the half-wits working down the Tilbury docks nearly pissed themselves laughing at him. He tells John, and while John doesn’t gift him with his delightful high-pitched giggle, Sherlock does get a snort that nearly sends coffee out of John’s nose.

End on a high note. He looks at his phone. “Thanks for meeting me, John, but you should go,” he says casually. “You’ll be late for your appointment.”

That gets him John’s full attention. “I didn’t say I had an appointment.”

The high note tumbles down several octaves into the sound his violin would make in the hands of a three year old, were he stupid enough to hand a toddler his Strad. According to Molly, rule number one of a coffee date is no deducing. Expecting him not to deduce is like expecting him not to breathe. Expecting him to keep his conclusions to himself, however, is reasonable, and he’s already cocked that up. “A guess.”

“You don’t guess.” John bares his teeth. “And you don’t lie to me anymore.”

Words tumble from Sherlock’s lips like someone’s put a gun to John’s head. “We met at two in a place inconvenient for both Westminster and you. You’ve been looking at your phone, checking the time, which could mean you’re bored and waiting for a socially acceptable length of time to pass before you make your excuses, but that was an amusing anecdote and there are no other indications of boredom. Discomfort, perhaps, but certainly understandable given our circumstances but not terminal, and certainly not boredom. You agreed to meet me but with a convenient excuse if you wanted to leave.”

John purses his lips. “Who am I seeing?”

“Your therapist. You’d stopped while I was gone. Now you’re seeing her again.”

John looks at him for a long moment. “You’re still in there, aren’t you?”

The blunt grey words are tinged every so palely with a very familiar fond exasperation, and he’s promised John he won’t lie to him again.  
“Yes,” he admits.

“Good,” John says, and gets to his feet. “Goodbye.”

Good.

John said _good_ , not _piss off_ or _freak_ or _dick_ or _that’s a shame I was just beginning to like the new you_. He said _good_.

What does it mean?

Sherlock’s never spent so much time contemplating a single syllable in his entire life.  
  
+  
  
A week later John finds himself at work, his phone in his hand, composing a text to Sherlock before he remembers he’s furious with the man. When he does, he considers all the possible implications of sending this text. He nearly deletes it. Instead, he hits send, because he’s bored at work, and really, _really_ wants to know.

Were you wearing the Belstaff when you slipped at the docks?

The answer comes before he finishes his notes in a patient’s file.

Of course. SH

The scene plays out in his head, and John quirks a smile. He’s been to the Tilbury docks with Lestrade and Sherlock. He can see it, smell it, and it makes his day a little less routine.

His phone vibrates again in the pocket of his white coat, interrupting a rather tedious recitation of bunion pain. John feels the familiar surge of heightened anticipation, but forces himself to wait until the patient has left clutching a prescription for anti-inflammatories and a referral to an orthopaedist.

It’s remarkably difficult to get the stench of fish out of thirteen hundred quid of waterproof wool. SH

This time John huffs out something like a laugh. He slips his phone in his jacket pocket and spends the rest of his shift contemplating first world problems, and what's possible with a Sherlock willing to mock himself.


End file.
